State Roundup . . .

Grand Rapids
Annual ArtPrize competition enters 7th year
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — Michigan’s annual ArtPrize competition is entering its seventh year Wednesday with more than 1,550 entries on display and a series of nighttime events.

Artists from around the world are participating in the 19-day event, with displays at 162 public venues around the Grand Rapids area. Artists will compete for $500,000 in prizes, including a $200,000 grand prize selected by public vote.

The first round of voting will trim the field to a final 20, comprising five entries each in four categories. After a second round of voting, the winners of public and juried awards will be announced Oct. 9. Votes can be cast using the free ArtPrize mobile app, online and via text message.

ArtPrize Education Days also begin Wednesday, aiming to bring more than 13,000 children from across the state to ArtPrize. Free programs are being offered to school group.
“The entire ArtPrize event is a hands-on contemporary arts experience for all ages, filled with limitless opportunities to discover, learn and create,” Becca Guyette, ArtPrize education manager, said in a statement.

Events billed as “ArtPrize Tonight” will bring more evening programming this year’s ArtPrize, including films, live performances and arts discussions. The Waterfront Film Festival is planned as well as a tent venue called “The Eddy.”

ArtPrize is evolving and expanding, broadening its reach with a new campus in SiTE:Lab’s Rumsey Street Project, The Grand Rapids Press reported. An entire city block will be converted into a temporary arts district.

Port Huron
Loan guarantee boosts effort to revamp building
PORT HURON, Mich. (AP) — A $1.5 million loan guarantee is expected to boost efforts to rehabilitate the vacant three-story Sperry’s building in downtown Port Huron.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced the support Tuesday for the roughly $10 million project.

Upon completion, HUD says the building is expected to include mixed-use commercial space for an entrepreneurial business incubator; several small specialty theaters on the first floor; a restaurant on second floor; and more small theaters on third floor.

HUD says the project earlier got a $1 million grant to help deal with the building’s environmental problems, including removing lead-based paint.
An awning and bricks on the building were damaged in June by a military helicopter dropping off soldiers as part of an urban military training exercise. No one was injured.

Brady Township
Fishing trip turns up mud-covered car in pond
BRADY TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — A man and his granddaughter were fishing when they spotted what turned out to be an old car beneath the waters of a Saginaw County pond.
John Jorencz tells The Saginaw News (http://bit.ly/1KuAGsI ) his 22-year-old granddaughter said it was a car but “I didn’t believe it was, until I saw the antenna.”

The Saginaw County sheriff’s department dive team responded Tuesday in Brady Township, about 75 miles northwest of Detroit, to help recover the Ford Taurus. The mud- and plant-covered car was pulled slowly from the water. A search didn’t find human remains inside.

Authorities are investigating how the car got into the pond.

The car was about 30 yards from the pond’s edge. Asked how the fishing trip went, Jorencz said: “We found a car and caught some bluegill.”

Romulus
Man freed from Yemen returns home to Michigan
ROMULUS, Mich. (AP) — One of two American hostages freed after months of being held in Yemen’s raging civil war has been reunited with family in Michigan.

Former U.S. Marine Sam Farran was greeted Tuesday night at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus by family and supporters. The Dearborn Heights man tells reporters that he “paced that cell ... thinking about this moment when I’m going to see them again.”

The security industry worker says he’s “very happy” and “glad to be home.”

Oman announced Sunday night that it had negotiated the release of two Americans, as well as three Saudis and a British citizen who had been held by Yemen’s Shiite Houthi rebels. The other freed American was Scott Darden, who works for a New Orleans-based logistics company.

Kalamazoo
Comment sought on superfund site cleanup plan
KALAMAZOO, Mich. (AP) — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is seeking public comment after officially releasing its proposal to clean up Kalamazoo’s Allied Paper Superfund site.

The Kalamazoo Gazette reports the proposal is similar to a compromise plan developed with city officials that was presented earlier this year. A 60-day comment period starts Sept. 30. A public hearing is scheduled for 6 p.m. Nov. 19 at Washington Writers’ Academy in Kalamazoo.

The $63 million plan calls for consolidating contaminated soil to about 27 acres. The land would be covered by an impermeable cap and would potentially be available for light recreational reuse. Long-term groundwater monitoring also is proposed.

Some community members wanted to completely remove soil contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. An earlier plan was estimated to cost $189 million.

Ypsilanti
Accidental heroin overdose killed inmate at prison
YPSILANTI, Mich. (AP) — Authorities say a heroin overdose killed a 25-year-old inmate this summer at the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility near Ypsilanti.

The Ann Arbor News reports the death certificate for Kayla Renea Miller shows she was pronounced dead of heroin toxicity on July 16.

The death was ruled an accident. State police are investigating and the agency says it doesn’t have further information to immediately release.

Miller was originally from Niles. Records show she was in prison for larceny and uttering and publishing in southwestern Michigan’s Berrien County.

Traverse City
Agency funds fish habitat projects in SE Michigan
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — A federal agency has awarded funding for two projects designed to restore severely degraded wildlife habitat in southeastern Michigan.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the projects target important spawning and nursery areas for muskellunge, northern pike, largemouth bass and other fish.

A grant of $415,605 will go to Friends of the Detroit River to improve about 3,000 feet of shoals and create 50 acres of backwater habitat within the Stony Islands in the lower Detroit River.

In nearby Dearborn, the Alliance of Rouge Communities will receive $350,000 in support of an effort to reconnect 50 miles of the Rouge River and 108 miles of its tributaries to the Great Lakes system.

The funds were provided through the federal Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

Hastings
Students asked not to display Confederate flag
HASTINGS, Mich. (AP) — A school district in western Michigan has asked students not to display the Confederate flag on their vehicles or wear clothes with it during school hours.

Hastings Area School System Superintendent Carrie Duits says she made the request to students last week. She tells The Grand Rapids Press that the district is using it as a “teachable moment” about how the flag is perceived, and that officials “know there is a balance between First Amendment rights and equal protection rights.”

WXMI-TV and WWMT-TV report a group of students spoke out against the request at a Monday night board meeting.

Consequences for displaying the flag haven’t been determined. Duits says students have been complying.

Hastings is about 40 miles southeast of Grand Rapids.